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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Ewa K. Bacon, "Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz" (Purdue UP, 2017)
Description: Today I talked to Ewa Bacon about her book Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz (Purdue UP, 2017).In a 1941 Nazi roundup of educated Poles, Stefan Budziaszek--newly graduated from medical school in Krakow--was incarcerated in the Krakow Montelupich Prison and transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp in February 1942. German big businesses brutally exploited the cheap labor of prisoners in the camp, and workers were dying. In 1943, Stefan, now a functionary prisoner, was put in charge of the on-site prisoner hospital, which at the time was more like an infirmary staffed by well-connected but untrained prisoners. Stefa...